The snow mound behind my car was a foot high and solid ice. How was I going to drive my Mercedes Benz over this mound and I really needed to go into the office. I carefully walked around the mounds, stepping into foot prints left from others when the snow was soft, prints now frozen in time. It was under 20o F and it wasn’t going to get up to 30o F, that day. How was I going to get out of here? The big orange plastic snow shovel I had bought the year before was not made for a job like this. This needed an ice pick.

“Click, click” - I unlocked my car doors, remembering the days when I had a car that I had to deice the locks. The engine purred as I turned the car on and leaned back to relax in my heated seats. Defrosting went on for a while. The ice did not respond.
“Boy, this was ice that said ‘I am ice, see me roar!’ This was “not ‘playin’ ice.”

Across the way a young lady came out, all bundled up like me.
“Boy, this is ice.” She giggled.
I yelled my agreement to her through the cold air. She began her dig. I had got my dig down. There was a system to it. If you banged the scrapper into the ice, shoving it at an angle, over and over, in spaces close to each other, after awhile the iced snow would break up and you could move it away. It was so cold though, that after about fifteen minutes of this, I had to get back into the warm car and defrost myself. The air was so cold outside that the ice froze on contact and I couldn’t brush ice it off my furry coat. I had to defrost it in the car. I told myself not to complain. Some people were living with this and did so every year in Wisconsin or Switzerland or Russia.

I asked Jesus, “Are you going to get me out of this space?”
Softly, but firmly he answered, “I’m right here. I’m standing right here with you.” Amazing. Maybe when I get to heaven, I won’t see it as so amazing. I’ll get how this works, how He is present with me and yet with others.

The young lady across the way began to try and drive her car out of her space. Back and forth she drove her little car, trying to battle her way out.
“Boy, this is something else.” She sighed.
“Yeah”, I agreed with her.
Her car groaned and moaned under the abuse of her determination to get out of that icy space. The space next to her became empty of a Cherokee jeep, showing off it’s prowess at being able to get out. She looked longing at his ease, then went back to her banging up against the ice mounds with her car. She began to turn into the empty space left by the jeep. She couldn’t get out that way either and then she got stuck, jack knifed diagonally and couldn’t move either way.

I wondered if she would be stuck there all day. Like some poor sap, a few spaces down, who had tried to get out and got caught stuck on top of a mound. That car sat there now forlornly, it’s back side out into the thoroughfare, ready to be hit by anything passing, angled like it was the board on a see saw.
I heard the young lady on her cell phone laughingly telling someone that she was stuck.
“Lucky, bugger. She’s got a boyfriend. I don’t have any man I can call. Maybe I should enroll in Match.com and if I find a boyfriend then I’ll have someone to call.”
Well, I was wrong about her, because very soon a very young boy came out of the building, in answer to her cell phone call. He was all bundled up and wielding an iron shovel!!!!!!!!! Just what I needed. But, oh well, he was designated to her.
“I’m stuck” she said, as if she was the child and he the grown up. He looked 9 years old, but he might have been 13. He set about the task of digging at that ice and shoveling it out of the way. He was careful and meticulous. I continued my work of cleaning off my car and keeping myself from frost bite, hearing him say once in awhile, “O.K. forward. Back. Turn.”

She was out! After 30 minutes of help and the arrival of another very young girl, she was out, and driving away. I was so happy for her. I saw her out of my rear view window, because I had done all I could with the outside of my car and I was just trying to defrost myself now.

Suddenly, the young “9” year old, started walking towards my car. Was he coming to see if I needed help? It was too much to ask. It couldn’t be, surely he was just trying to get himself out of the cold. No, he was coming towards my car. He was bending over, at the back of my car. Was he looking for something? No, he was digging into the ice mound that was hemming me in. Was he going to dig me out? Oh my! My help had come. He diligently dug away without a “please Ma’am or thank you”. I hurried to get my bundled up self out of the car to say Thank You as soon as possible, as if the Thank You was going to help him in his task.
“Oh, thank you so much sweetie. Thank You!” He looked sideways at me from under his hood, like, “Who is she talking to?” Flustered at his reaction and containment, I went on thanking and standing there feeling “numb and dumb”. Oh, well, he wasn’t going to say anything, he wasn’t paying me any attention, and I couldn’t help him shovel, so I got back into the car, mumbling my last whiny Thank You.

As I was Praising God for coming to my rescue and supplying my needs according to His riches in Glory, the boy stopped shoveling and moved to the side of the parking space, without a word, as if waiting for me to back out. I rolled down my window and asked, sheepishly,
“Should I back out?”
In a grownup voice he said gruffly “Come on” like a husband, woken up on his day off, to shovel His wife out of the driveway. So I put the car in reverse and pressed the accelerator. It moved about an inch. Then I put it in drive and moved forward. In reverse, I went back an inch and a half. In drive and I went forward a bit. In reverse I pressed harder and went back. The boy, still standing, to the side, as if bored, with me, sure that I was going to get out, and waiting for me to do it properly. I stopped a little frustrated. Well, what was my next instruction from this boy man! What did he want me to do? I tried one more time. In drive, forward and then in reverse and back, really hard…and my car floated up and over the shorten ice mound and the steering wheel turned expertly, as if on its own, pointing me towards the exit of the parking lot.

Talk about “Jesus Take the Wheel”! I felt that He was also somewhere up under the hood of that 9 year old. Out and victorious, I rolled down my window to appreciate my friend. This boy man. So stern and yet so little. As I turned to him to start my thanks, he suddenly acted 9 years old.
“Have any change Ma’am?” he giggled.
“Oh, of course sweetie. Let me just park and go upstairs and get you something – or never mind I have lots of change right here.”
I opened my coin drawer, it was packed with change.
“Thank you!” he came forward appreciative. He was no longer manlike, just a child tickled about making some change.
“No, thank you!” I insisted as I began to pull coins out of the crowded drawer. “No, you can’t carry a lot in you hand! Open a pocket for me so I can pour them in.”
“Wow! Thank You Ma’am” his big round eyes showed his glee. They were no longer looking at me sideways as if I were in the way. It was his turn to gush appreciatively.

It was he who should get the thank you. Him and his Master Jesus. The Angel of the Lord that used him to help me.

copyright 2007 Princess Carroll Ayo Durodola

If you died today, are you absolutely certain that you would go to heaven? You can be! TRUST JESUS NOW